Huh. This is an interesting thread fo sho. It's been neat as well reading about everyone's personal experiences, stories, and opinions on the matter.

Just to add to the collective here, most of my experience with drugs has been through seeing others on drugs. My next-door neighbor growing up, a kid my age, had a rule to try everything at least once. So I got to see him on things like PCP and meth in addition to standards like LSD, codeine, and grass. In my own experience, I have smoked pot a few times and never liked it. I've only ever achieved a medium high once, and while it was nice, it reminded me of having a nice buzz from drinking and I just didn't respond to it with much interest. The other times were either one hit while I was already drunk, followed immediately by wondering why I'd even bothered because I wasn't going to notice it anyway, or getting stoned out of my gourd and sitting alone in the dark imagining bile wash over my tongue. I just don't find much enjoyment in it.

There's also painkillers, which I fucking HATE. Again, this is totally just my personal response, but I have felt the effects of painkillers when I've not needed it and it just made me physically feel like shit. I enjoy drinking, and probably only respond to that because it's more accepted in the US and is a moderated staple in my family, so I've just grown up knowing and learning about it. Even with that, I now (after college) drink only for taste, which doesn't mean I don't still get drunk from time to time--it just means that when I drink anything, whether out with friends or at home, it's going to be something I want to taste in my mouth, at the pace I want to go. The last time I drank out of specific motivation to get smashed it was my bachelor party and filled my tent with puke.

I've developed a personal rule over the years of not wanting any kind of drug besides alcohol, which I only enjoy for the craft and variation in style--I love whisky, beer, and wine, for example. I enjoy cigars and pipe tobacco for taste and smell, and only smoke tobacco once a month. And for some reason, I do really, REALLY want to try mushrooms and peyote, but only because those are the only things I believe will actually be consciousness-expanding experiences, and I want to do them in a Hicksian controlled environment of nature and spiritual communion. Maybe one day.

I have virtually no experience with recreational drugs. I grew up in the 80s and was raised by someone who'd get a six pack about once a year. I'm terrified of addiction. I was essentially straight edge in all but name. But in my chronic pain days, I took a lot of narcotics. Or nowhere near as many as my doctors prescribed, but at least one or two percocet a day for years. I don't think I've felt any sort of a buzz from percs since my second back surgery in late '05, but when I'd go through a rough patch and up the dosage for a couple of weeks, I definitely felt withdrawal when I cut back. They are evil little bastards, especially when you need them. I had a doctor once, the first ever who seemed concerned about over-prescribing, who asked if I ever took them "for a vacation," trying to be circumspect about getting high. I explained, I'm in pain all the time. When I take one, I'm in less pain. Does that count as a vacation? I genuinely believe that if I'd taken the doses prescribe and encouraged for me to take, I'd still be unemployed and unemployable. I would never have gotten the job with the health insurance that allowed me to get the surgery that fixed 90% of my pain and provided me a functional life. The sick thing is that most of the doctors I had would have considered that a job well done.

I haven't taken a single perc for about three years. My ex wife accused me of being a junkie in court during our divorce/custody dispute. I decided then and there, it didn't matter how much pain I was in, I was not going to take any narcotics again. Mind you, that was about four months after major back surgery (they came in from the front and then again the back two days later, fused two levels of my spine and inserted a bunch of hardware... 12 month estimated recovery time, so the 1 or 2 percocets a week I was on at the time was well below what my doctors felt I should be doing).

@AtomicSloth: Piracetam can require a big "loading dose" to kind of activate its beneficial effects in people that's taken before beginning the maintenance regimen, and it also requires you to take a pretty big maintenance dose. Just wondering if you missed out on either of those.

@RachelTyrell: I was working in pharmacy when Adderall went generic, and when something goes generic all the brand names obviously switch to generic/drug names on the bottles. Cue HUNDREDS of hysterical parents calling up screaming at us because "Amphetamine Salts" appeared on the label of their kid's prescription narcotic. One of the most surreal things I've ever been involved in, complete with parents refusing to believe that's what the drug actually was and having no concept of its nature despite forcefeeding it to their kids every day.

I've read a few posts and can respect what people have to say, I honestly do. If you can take substances and not let them destroy you then I guess that's...ok? Nothing to do with you lot, so don't take this wrong, but I hate it when people indulge in euphoric recall; it's something I've got to be very wary of, as I can do it. And nothing bores a lot of people more than when other people sit around going on about drugs.

Anyway, I'm surprised there's any left...I thought I'd taken all of 'em!

Seriously, though, as most of you know I am a full-blown addict of the 3rd kind, and it aint pretty. And I thought it would never happen to me when I was younger, so you got to be careful.

I must have done acid about 50+ times, swallowed E at raves from Hell until everyone was huggable, quaffed loads of magic mushrooms, smoked forests of weed and hash etc, snorted and ate ounces of speed, shot-up kilos of heroin and coke, smoked cinder-blocks of crack, gagged-on prescribed pills with names you really don't need to know, drunk rivers of methadone, had withdrawals from shit they don't even make anymore, slurped and banged-up handfuls of Ritalin and Dexedrine to be able to do everything and absolutely nothing, necked booze like it had just been invented, sat with bin-liners full of shite from breaking into chemists...

I could go on and on and on and on, but I won't, because I mostly regret it all. I really would like to write a book about all my stuff, but I don't want to make it just another story about being a junkie.

Is there a fucking doctor in the house? I want a cup of coffee and a fag!

That is so incredibly true and I think something that should be carried in the back pocket at all times: I don't think anybody woke up one morning and went "hey, I'm going to be an addict/alcoholic". Nobody's above ending up as one, so care should be taken...

(Sorry, flecky - bits of euphoric recall ahead. You might want to skip on to the next comment, mate.)

A sure sign of getting old is the realisation you have more prescription drug anecdotes than recreational ones...which this thread just provided, thanks. Bear in mind, I haven't touched anything illegal since June 1991 (I only remember because it was at a concert and the E I took to liven things up was as shit as the band's performance), so my information, attitudes and opinions might be a little obsolete.

Ecstasy: The. Best. Or at least between 88-91 when I was enjoying it during and beyond the whole godawful "Madchester" thing I was stuck in the epicentre of, working and socialising in Manchester. Despite costing £25/$40 a pop for a long time, it was a going-out must-have, to the point where, when I stopped taking it, I lost all interest in going out. For me, all those "in love with the world" clichés were 100% spot on and being anywhere surrounded by other E-heads was regularly one of the most chilled, nicest environments I've been in - even people you normally wouldn't piss on if they were on fire were OK to be with. Quit when it was dirt cheap and everywhere, with lager louts boasting about how many tabs they'd taken over the weekend instead of pints, but mostly, because you could buy it anywhere, you couldn't be sure what was actually in it (because I did personally chemically analyse all the early ones before taking them, I know.) Despite being fat, middle-aged and a physical wreck, if someone offered me one of the pills from when I first tried it, I'd tear their hand off, but that's the only one I ever get pangs to try again and I think 90% of that is nostalgia for that time of my life rather than the chemical itself.

Weed: The few times I tried it, it always left me feeling numb and paranoid, so never developed a liking. Especially after a spliff helped trigger the worst acid trip I ever had. It can usually be a lot of fun to be the only one who's sober when everybody else is stoned to buggery, though. Not my experience but a guy I worked with loved his Mary-Jane for most of the time I knew him. One day he told me he'd "knocked it on the head" (he's proper cockney) and couldn't believe the difference it made to his ability to focus, eating habits, energy levels and even his sleep pattern. His reform didn't last but he'd learned how something he saw as being on a par with normal cigarettes really affected him.

Speed: Best summed-up by another guy I worked and went "raving" with: "You spend all week in the shop with me and barely say a word but as soon as you're speeding, you pin me in a corner and talk at me till my ears bleed." (Govt. Spy, we are never meeting whilst on drugs, OK?) Enjoyable enough at the time, if you overlook the low-level panic attack on the way up, my complete inability to piss if I took too much and increasingly bad downers for days afterwards, culminating with nearly chinning an awkward customer because he spent "too long" umming and ahhing about which Happy Mondays baseball cap he was going to buy. That's when I stopped.

LSD: Only got started on this because nobody had E on the night. Me and the same guy as above split half a "Judge Dredd" (it even had a little picture of him printed on it, bless), innocently/naively/complete dumb-assedly assuming it wouldn't be that different to ecstasy. Spent the next 6 hours wandering, literally wide-eyed, around the Hacienda, smoking 80 (eighty) cigarettes between us (when neither of us smoked), scared-off the wannabe "gangsters" who deliberately blocked us during one of the thousands of laps we made round the club just by looking so out of it and ended with my friend standing on the edge of the stage for...minutes/hours/weeks before calmly stepping off and landing on his face a few feet below because he was convinced the dancefloor had risen up to his level. Carried on taking it, despite all this, and even experienced the predictable "at one with the universe" moment until my ex dragged me into her parents' house because she was suffering from the other half of the tab I was on. Gave up because, with me at least, that first bad trip made me conscious of it happening again when doing acid which only served to create a delightful self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe some of your experiences can clarify this for me because apparently it's unusual, but I only ever had two moments of visual hallucinations throughout months of tripping my tits off.

Cocaine: Tried it once, when very, very drunk. All it did was sober me up which, at the time, really pissed me off. A lot of your descriptions about the stuff ring bells re: a good friend who really got into it. I'd have still classed him as a recreational user but the last time we spoke (getting on for 7 or 8 years now), he was cranky, paranoid and not a shade of the easy-going bloke he had been. Even before that happened, and ignoring all the 80s stereotypes, I'd never seen anyone who didn't turn into a wanker the moment it was up their nose for the first time.

Amyl Nitrate/Poppers: Evil shit. Bought a bottle to try once but just cracking it open was enough to bring on a killer headache and I've had to leave clubs because there was so much of it in the air.

Why did I try any of these? Because I was young, stupid, they were very readily available and, in the case of ecstasy, free - my former employer told all his workers they "have to try this stuff because it's fucking brilliant!" (I miss working there sometimes.) Why did I carry on taking them for the time I did? Because they were (mostly) fun, everybody at work the next day was in the same state, with even the boss so shedded he couldn't give us grief for not doing any work, and it turned me into someone else who I disliked slightly less: not as uptight, unrecognisably sociable and (ugh) danced occasionally (arms-only, trance-dance stylee but without the whistle, bandana, sunglasses and other various dayglo rave accoutrements - I was too busy selling all that shit to kids at work, thank fuck.)

(Btw, all these experiences took place in nightclubs and the like, never at home or for noble expand-your-consciousness-for-the-sake-of-it reasons - the drugs were alcohol replacements or substitutes. And they all happened while I still lived with my parents, who didn't have a clue, making the morning-after scenarios horribly entertaining.)

I dunno. Maybe I've been lucky but, Bad Coke Friend aside, I've never known anyone "gateway" from these onto anything stronger or injectable and, at least last time I bothered paying attention, 20-odd years later, nobody's addicted, developed dementia (yet) or died as a result of their recreational usage.

(Didn't realise their was a character-length limit here before trying to post my whole rambling waffle.)

Anyway, here's Pt. II. Apologies again.

Perhaps because I'm older and nominally wiser or, more likely, due to having to take them, the mouthful of prescription meds for assorted back, stomach and brain problems I start and end each day with worry me a hell of a lot more than any of the "fun" ones listed above ever did, even though the legal ones quantifiably add to my quality of life. There are others I've flat-out refused to take even though they might be of benefit to me and my ailments - almost always because of the warning sign advising people not to suddenly stop taking them. Although I could conceivably be taking them for the rest of my life, I don't want to be addicted/reliant on them for themselves. Tramadol was a prescription (for my back) I got filled but, before I'd had chance to take one, my desk neighbour at work spotted the bottle and asked if I'd be willing to sell some or all to him. Call it an overreaction but medicine which interests someone enough they're willing to pay to obtain on the sly so they can take for whatever high or other effect it has, isn't something I really want to be taking a couple of times a day and, after reading what AtomicSloth said about it, glad I didn't bother. I can't find who also said they do this, sorry, but I take drug days-off from the Zapain (extra-strength codeine/paracetamol) and nortriptyline once a month or so, too, just to reassure myself I'm not hooked for any other reason than the pain-relief they give.

The ratio contrasting the different types of pills I've stopped taking due to side effects or lack of desired effect and those I'm currently on is about 8-to-1 so, by the same logic, maybe you have to keep trying different recreational ones until you discover the one that's right for you?

I didn't take any amphetamines before starting this but enough already.

@The Mighty Foamhead: Good posts, mate. I'm glad you didn't get into the Tramadol; I've seen a lot of "addicts" relapse on that stuff over the past year.

I probably gave you are hug in the Hacienda in all that Madchester stuff. Shit, to the younger folk on here we must sound like hippies going on about Woodstock :)

Glad you mentioned Amyl/Poppers; it's like taking the effects of glue mixed with the stench of chlorine and bleach. Headaches are imminent, that is a certainty. I used to go to clubs where the stink of it was like a pissed-in indoor swimming pool. I once spilled a whole bottle down the front of my jacket in a taxi coming back from a club with some people. I think I laughed insanely for about twenty-minutes, then probably just groaned with a migraine when I got indoors. I can't remember.

Which is something a hear a lot; all these wicked nights-out, where you think your having a great time (at the time)...they can all become a bit of a blur. You can't really remember them properly in later life, which is a pity. I've got fonder memories of, say, going to see The Cure (when they started), Motorhead (when I was a heavy-metal kid) etc. than all the bands I saw when off my head. In my early twenties I used to go to a thrash-metal night every Sunday and get stinking drunk. I can't really remember any of the bands properly, but what I can remember was acting like a tit.

And that's not good.

EDIT TO ADD: Maybe the bands where shite, and I don't want to remember!

When I was unemployed in the mid 90's, there was this thing that you had to queue in the social security office for certain appointments, like first come first serve for some shit. Man, the guys who were doing speed were so fucking annoying back then. It was like looking at the most aggressive game a pinball machine - everyone else was sitting down and queuing like us nice Finns do, and then there were these guys bouncing around, checking shit, bumming money etc etc and I KNOW this must sound just so silly but... you know, this is not really what Finns do.

A little anecdote about Tramadol in the US: it was originally released in the US as a non-control prescription on the same level as 600mg/800mg ibuprofen thanks to the "overwhelming evidence" from the pharmaco about its non-addictive nature. Pretty quickly became clear that was all bullshit and the FDA took the rare step of rescheduling it to a controlled prescription on the same level as Tylenol #3 (paracetamol and codeine), Valium and hydrocodone.

Given that control prescriptions are only good for six months from the date they're written versus the year for noncontrols, this had the wonderful effect of instantly and retroactively canceling every tramadol script more than six months old. Cue hundreds of thousands patients with "x refills available until [this date]" printed on the bottle screaming over prescriptions now expired thanks to the rescheduling.

I'd be very interested to hear folks opinions on the idea of a genetic predisposition towards addictive patterns of behaviour.

I don't know if it's genetic, but I seem to be fairly non-addictive. I've had periods in which I've used marijuana, vicodin, oxycontin, pretty regularly for extended periods of time... then just quit when the supply dried up, and simply didn't look back. Even though I drink alcohol and caffeine pretty much daily, I've quit both cold-turkey for like backpacking trips, and wasn't bothered. And then there's the stuff like E or coke or amphetamines, which I usually did just once in a while before I quit that crap.

I'm using my rl name so not going to be that vocal, but did self medicate with booze for many years until it got totally unsustainable. Ironically, I had a full on breakdown six months after I stopped drinking, was forced to learn to deal with chronic depression without it. I can drink like a 'normal' person now, sometimes a lot, but most often just the odd beer/whisky. But at one point I picked up the phone to AA but couldn't face the thought of not drinking again.

On prescription drugs - took prozac for a while, initially was heavenly, felt like a zen master, nothing could faze me, could see the universe and loved it; then I came off it and it never worked for me again. They put me on Venlafaxine, which worked at first and then turned me into a zombie, put on three stone and became so lethargic it really hurts to watch family videos from when my kids were really small - I just look like a drowsy bear in all of them, and in a lot of cases I'm half asleep, lord knows how I held a job down. Came off that when I had to apologise to my boss for being asleep at my desk most days... withdrawal from Venlafaxine is, eh, intriguing... Citalopram seems to work, have been on and off that for about four years now; don't seem to be able to get off it, but at least have a degree of stability.

Am quite ambivalent these days about illegal drugs. There are several people who I used to hang around with that are dead from heroin. Three close friends are alcoholics. Another old friend now stands on a roundabout from dawn to dusk with a hoody and backpack and sometimes a picture of Princess Diana and has a facebook group dedicated to him by fuckwit smartarse students who don't know he was one of them once - took a lot of ecstasy and never came back. I feel very lucky I came out of all that pretty unscathed, because so many didn't make it. Sometimes wonder if it would be fun to try and reenact Fear and Loathing again, but I'm not that person any more, and on balance, I don't want to be. Worst vice now is probably caffeine, although at high enough quantities it does the same thing as speed and tastes nicer.

"Sometimes wonder if it would be fun to try and reenact Fear and Loathing again, but I'm not that person any more, and on balance, I don't want to be."

Exactly. But... I wish I did want to. Sort of like, I don't really want to be a smoker again. Because now I am too possessed with the stink and the worthless cost and the way my body feels. But I miss being the person who smoked a pack and a half a day and could thoroughly enjoy it.

The thing about psychedelics, apart from me reverting to monkey form and climbing up trees in seconds, was that I used to know the answer to EVERYTHING - the answer to that niggling, gargantuan question that philosophy and existentialism couldn't answer for me. I could see the meaning to life, even though I felt like I had a cabbage-entity growing in my stomach. Problem was, though, I didn't know what the fucking question was, so I really never got anywhere.

Horror factoid: the withdrawals from methadone can feel like the worse trip going. Walls and faces melt, greenery looks like something from Swamp Thing, and that's just what the eye can see. I'm so glad I'm off that evil shit. I'm on a small dosage of Subutex (buprenorphine) at the moment, and when I got clean a few weeks back the withdrawals weren't too bad: facing up to my addiction was the monster that got me.

Anyway, psychedelics. My crap advice is take with like minded people, don't do it in clubs or cities, as nature is your best bet on that stuff. Be somewhere where you can fall-over and point at the sky going purple without people saying, "What's the matter with you?"

all I'd like to add as also using my RL name is that I've recently quit alchohol, cigarettes and caffeine, (not sure if it's a permanent thing yet, just wanted to knock it on the head for a while, (btw I'm not a cockney)) anyway, what shocks me is that I havent really craved a cigarette or a drink but christ almighty sometimes I think I'd kill someone for an espresso, coffee is all I can think about. Headaches, sweating, the shakes, I look and act like some junkie cliche, and not being a junkie, I'm fairly sure its the caffeine withdrawals. Mental

By the way, some interesting stuff from the Madchester people, being born there too late for that scene.